“If you don’t feel grateful, joyful, prayerful, or confident, here’s the good news: Our feelings always follow our focus. We don’t choose our focus according to our feelings; we choose our focus regardless of our feelings, and the feelings will come. . . . There’s nothing wrong with feelings, but they are not our reality, and we don’t have to obey them.”- Chip Ingram
“But Joseph said to [his brothers], ‘Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.’ “- Genesis 50:19-20 (ESV)
Chip Ingram continues Chapter 2 of I Choose Joy with the third key to help us develop an upward focus.
3. An Attitude. In order to develop an upward focus, it’s absolutely critical that we make this choice. To choose confidence in what God is doing and what He has promised. Consequently, we need to look at everything through the lens of eternity. Not a temporal lens.
Because even when life seems out of control, God remains in control. So, from an eternal perspective, we possess every reason to express confidence in what God is doing. As well as how our circumstances will work out. In addition, when we look back over some of our hardest and most painful seasons, we realize how powerful and sustaining it is to anchor in God’s promises and character.
In conclusion, Chip exhorts:
“That’s why our gratitude, our joy, and our confidence are never dependent on our circumstances. They are dependent on God’s faithfulness, which remains constant regardless of anything we might go through. You can be grateful, prayerful, and confident of the future, not because you’ve got it all together or because you think your circumstances are going to change (though they very often will), but because God put His Spirit within you, and He who began a good work in you is going to see you through. That’s His promise.”
Today’s question: What most helps you know that our feelings always follow our focus? Please share.
Tomorrow’s blog: “Deep and lasting joy”